But the thing is this makes no sense. Tech issues always turn into people issues - when there is a disagreement, who adjudicates? How can a manager adjudicate something they don't understand. And how will engineers respect / follow the decision?

And people issues invariably become tech issues. How can you hire the right people if you don't understand the tech? How will you know when to fire?

This setup makes no sense to me and i have very rarely seen it work. It seems like it was a product of an earlier time when there was a lot of money floating around and provided a way to (a) shield senior eng from dealing with people problem they just didn't want to, and (b) provide cushy jobs to professional managers that didn't know much about the tech.

But it doesn't work. There's no way to do the shielding well and a person with hiring/firing power needs to know what the fuck is going on.

Really good eng leaders must be both good at tech and good at people. That's the job.

I got to know him much better through these productive interactions then awkward smalltalk in a 1:1.

And it kind of make sense to meet privately quarterly since perf reviews are also quarterly and that's the only reason I can really think of for a private scheduled face-to-face.

Of course I could always just ask for a private meeting anytime I wanted, which I guess I did from time to time. But it always for a product reason: a tough tech choice I was wrestling with or similar.

If you can do it w/ the first model why on earth would you not?

Different roles though.